KEY POINTS:
She's unflappable, unstoppable, but, apparently, not infallible. After three games in the National Bank Cup, Irene van Dyk has shot more goals herself than most rival teams have in total.
She's bagged 164 of 172 attempts under the post for the Magic. Compare that to, say, the Flames, who have so far scored 144 goals.
Van Dyk's 95 per cent success rate makes her by far the most accurate of all shooters in the competition.
So far, there's no surprise in these statistics. Except when van Dyk, 35, the world's deadliest goal shoot, says she still has much to learn.
Magic coach Noeline Taurua gives her a fresh list of things to work on every Tuesday night at the team's weekly training session. It comes on a DVD, with clips of her strengths and weaknesses from the previous weekend's game.
"Flip! She doesn't go lightly on us - she rips the living daylights out of us," says van Dyk. "The other day my DVD had 12 clips from the game against the Shakers [where van Dyk missed one goal from 50]. Two clips were things I had done relatively well; the rest were things I had to work on."
On Wednesday afternoons, van Dyk sits in front of the TV, while daughter Bianca (who turned 9 last week) sits at the kitchen table, and together they do their homework. "There are always things to learn, especially when you have new players come into your team.
"I'm happy to learn from Noeline - she's an incredible, innovative coach, who's taking the game to a new level," she says. "With the DVD, you can slow it all down and see what exactly she's been trying to teach you for the last four years yet still can't do!"
While van Dyk isn't going to pinpoint her weaknesses for the benefit of defenders across the country - and afar - she says she and her fellow Magic attackers need to sharpen their timing and placement of passes.
The defending champions get one chance a week to train together, in Hamilton. With time of the essence, Taurua makes the DVDs for every player to take home and evaluate.
She says: "We can only afford one training session because we have players living too far away, and most of our team are mothers. Our time is too precious to sit on the sideline talking about what went wrong. With video footage, I can give them feedback."
And that suits Wellington-based van Dyk. "When I first played for the Shakers, we trained every night and I never got to put my daughter to bed," she says. Now van Dyk flies to Hamilton on a Tuesday afternoon and is back in Wellington by 8am next day to take Bianca to school.
She gives all the kudos for her accuracy this season to her feeders: "They put the ball into beautiful spaces and I just have to stand under the post." She's enjoying the new dynamic of former Silver Fern captain Anna Stanley (Rowberry), with her trademark bullet pass.
In just over a fortnight, van Dyk will be expected to replicate that dead-eyed form at international level against England and Australia in Britain and bubbles over with anticipation. "It's just so exciting to be going and playing international netball again," she says.
"The fact that we play England, Australia and Jamaica before the world champs this year is amazing - I don't remember playing three major teams in a year like that before.
"Travel will be an issue on this tour - with the 28 hours' flying to England. Jet-lag could be hard for us to deal with. And it's going to be tough when we come straight back into the National Bank Cup without a weekend off."
Neither jet-lag nor parochialism will be a problem for van Dyk when the unbeaten Magic travel south to Invercargill for tomorrow night's match with the re-energised Sting - a replay of last year's NBC final.
Van Dyk revels in the one-eyed atmosphere of Stadium Southland.
"I love it down there," she says. "The people are just so passionate about netball, you can't help but enjoy it.
"You could do the flashiest piece of play - but they are so loyal they're not going to applaud the opposition. And that's just the way it is."
